CANCEL: A feature engineering method for churn prediction in a privacy-preserving context

Abstract

This paper proposes a solution for predicting churn with privacy preservation by using edge computing. With the increasing popularity of smartphones, users are becoming more demanding regarding mobile app usage. Installing and removing an app are frequent routines and the ease of uninstallation can facilitate churn, which is customer abandonment. Companies seek to minimize churn since the cost of acquiring new customers is much higher than retaining current ones. To predict possible abandonment, organizations are increasingly adopting artificial intelligence (AI) techniques. Nevertheless, customers are becoming more concerned about their data privacy. In this context, we propose a technique called CANCEL, which creates attributes based on users' temporal behavior, with edge computing to predict churn locally, without transmitting users' data. The paper presents the evaluation of CANCEL in comparison to baseline solutions, the development of a mobile app integrated with the proposed method and deployed as an edge computing solution.